


Early Days

by confettiinmyhair



Series: Fever Dreams [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Biting, Hand Jobs, Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares, alcohol consumption, mention of canon-typical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 02:48:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6782320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confettiinmyhair/pseuds/confettiinmyhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On an evening during the first case in Minnesota, Dr. Lecter offers some relief from Will's already-troubling dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The chill of the night air seemed to nail itself in directly behind his temples, and he breathed in deeply, reveling in the shock of it even as he felt himself physically reel.

The night terrors weren’t new. They came with the territory of _being Will Graham_.

He hadn’t even put socks on when he’d left the room - just pulled his jeans back on, slipped his shoes on (he’d felt the backs give slightly in the process, knew that the leather would start dimpling there from now on), picked the keys and his wallet up from the night stand, and walked outside.

He wished, sometimes, that he hadn’t so resolutely quit smoking after college.

He knew ( _knew_ , KNEW) the damage it did to the human body but, oh. Oh, to feel that fluid burn of smoke in his throat in the dead hours of the night?

That was a feeling he missed.

He didn’t walk down to the hotel’s little bar with the intent of _incapacitating_ himself, certainly, and he typically frowned on the idea of drinking when he was on a job (why dull the senses when you need them most?) but… the fucking _dream_.

He’d been humming to himself, delicately browsing a case of knives that had seemed to go on for miles. He realized, at some point, that on the dark walls above the lights of the displays, there hadn’t merely been the vaguely patterned wallpaper he’d thought he’d seen at first.

Slowly, he’d begun to recognize the flayed human forms pinned to the walls. It was some time later, even more gradually, that he’d realized that he knew the people who’d been tacked up.

An elementary school friend. A few of his students from the academy. The date he’d taken to his (spectacularly failed) junior prom. His father. His mother. A handful of short-lived college flings.

It wasn’t until they’d started climbing down off the walls that he’d even begun to panic, and it wasn’t until they’d worked him over more than once with a number of the knives that he’d finally jolted awake.

The obviously self-inflicted red lines all over his body were proof enough that he’d been doing his damnedest to claw himself awake for at least twenty minutes.

So yeah, that fucking _dream_. He needed a drink.

***

“I never took you for a brandy drinker.”

Will jolted out of his thoughts slightly, looking wide-eyed at where Lecter was taking a seat next to him. The man paused for just a moment, bowing his head slightly before settling himself onto the bar chair.

“Forgive me.”

“No, forgive me, doctor. I thought you were already on your way back to Baltimore,” he said, taking another sip of the drink.

“Yes, well. Jack asked if I might stay on to oversee the last interview with you, and I don’t happen to have any patients to see tomorrow.”

“Every little bit does help,” Will nodded.

“If I might expand on my earlier thought,” Lecter said quietly, after a long pause, “I didn’t take you for much of a drinker at all.”

“Only bad nights,” Will answered, keeping his gaze fixed to the lacquered bar top, and scoffed lightly. “Only especially bad nights.”

“‘Bad’ being the overwhelming norm?” Lecter asked, resting his fingertips on the edge of the bar.

“Admittedly.”

“Dare I ask what makes for a 'good’ night?”

Will shook his head and let his eyes slide shut.

“There are…” he softened his voice intentionally before he carried on, “very few things that will dampen my… 'gifts' long enough for me to feel 'good’.”

“Nothing too far out of the ordinary?”

The emphasis, sarcastic though it was intended, did seem to have gotten his point across.

The polite teasing was obvious enough in Lecter’s responding tone.

“I never did develop a taste for electrodes,” he joked back, draining his glass.

_Sure. Let’s just make sure there’s no eye contact so I can keep it up, and let’s check to make sure you’re not going to tell me to shut the fuck up while I mutter the entire time to keep myself focused. But at least there’s nothing **weird** ,_ he thought to himself, mentally toasting the times he’d actually had to _pay_  for sex just so he could numb himself a little bit.

He set the glass down, rubbed at his temples for a moment, and sighed - he thought - inaudibly. 

“I have an idea,” Lecter said, and Will heard his chair shift slightly against the floor and the nearly imperceptable sound of his shoe soles touching the ground as he stood.

“Do you?” he deadpanned, not moving himself.

“I do. Come along, hmm?”

Will opened his eyes and turned only his head to look to Lecter again, doing his best to guard his expression. Surely…

“Rather,” Lecter said, his voice barely a rumble in his throat, with a gesture at the empty glass and a gently-scolding arch to his left brow, “than allow you to ruin your talents for the morning?”

Somehow, that was enough.


	2. Chapter 2

They walked quietly back to Will’s room, and for as somewhat-awkward as it felt to have Lecter one pace behind him the entire time, he didn’t actively feel like he was being _chased_. There was something strangely easy about it, and that in itself was strange.

Things like this were typically very anxiety-riddled experiences for him.

*

The dim bedside lamp was still on, and Will was actually almost surprised at how _gentle_ Lecter was about grasping him by the front of his t-shirt to push him back against the wall - he was perfectly well aware of the rougher impulses his skittishness tended to inspire in people.

He kept his hands flat against the wall to the sides of his hips and kept his gaze locked on the corner of the ceiling, tipping his head to the side as Lecter ran an open palm up the side of his neck and pushed his fingertips into Will's still-bedraggled hair.

He was grateful that Lecter wasn’t trying to kiss him, was grateful that he hadn’t simply presumed to shove him down on the mattress to tug all of his clothes off.

Nonetheless, he kept his jaw shut tight, breathing deeply through his nose as he felt Lecter drag his free hand down his left side, felt that same hand ghost over his ribs before pressing flat against his sternum, felt the other hand tighten ever-so-gradually in his hair…

He felt himself closing his eyes slightly at the sensation, and with another deep breath, brought himself back to the moment, eyes wide open and re-fixed on that point in the corner of the ceiling, clutching his lower lip between his teeth to keep himself silent.

“You’re quiet,” Lecter said, mouth closer to Will’s ear than he’d realized, that hand moving slowly down the center of his chest, over his stomach, resting on the button of Will’s jeans. His thumb traced gently at the very edge of the fabric, the nail scraping ever so slightly at the skin, and Will nodded slowly.

“Does that bother you?” he asked, rolling his hips into the sensation as Lecter’s hand moved still further down, grasping him lightly through the denim.

“No, but it bothers you.”

“Don’t -” he muttered, voice breaking for a moment as Lecter finally ( _finally_ ) pulled his fly open, “don’t analyze me with my cock in your hand.”

“What would you rather, then?” Lecter asked, slipping his hand between the denim of the jeans and the cotton of the boxers underneath, and Will was suddenly quite aware that he was already far harder than he’d realized.

“Would you rather I got on my knees,” Lecter whispered, “let you slide down my throat, hmm?”

Will’s hands balled into fists against the wall, keeping himself from gasping as he felt Lecter’s fingers press close around him through the fabric.

“Let you slide down my throat as you whisper all your secrets to me, Will?”

He let himself thrust shakily into the touch, let his eyes close, let himself shake his head slightly before he answered.

“Never took you for a sub.”

“Hardly,” and he could feel the curve on Lecter’s lips as the grin formed against his neck.

“Oral fixation?”

“ _Now_ who’s analyzing?”

Huffing out a laugh, Will let himself sink into the feeling of Lecter’s other hand tightening in his hair once again, felt his jeans slip a few inches down his hips, wondered momentarily if he shouldn’t be _doing_ something, but it hit him.

“That’s it, though, isn’t it? The taste and the preparation and the presentation. Otherwise there’d be no reason,” he muttered, finally reaching up and grasping at Lecter’s lapels, grinding himself against the man’s hand, “for all of _this_ , would there? We’d be on the bed fucking like animals, and you’d probably be trying to get me to act like some broken boy for you.”

“Voice of experience?”

“Mark me above the shirt collar and see what you get for the trouble,” he replied, felt the little gust of Lecter’s chuckle against his skin.

“You’ve got my curiosity. And below?”

“You’re not going to get me to beg,” he fired back, barely above a shaking whisper.

“I can see that, but do you _want_ it?”

He swallowed hard and nodded before forcing the word from his throat.

“Yes.”

With one smooth motion, Lecter pulled his hand from Will’s hair and yanked the collar of his t-shirt to the right, sinking his teeth slowly into the meat of Will’s shoulder just above the collar bone.

It wasn’t a flash-bang of sensation, but it was a very sudden build up to the peak, and he could feel his toes curling in his shoes as he (like some fucking teenager, jesus) came in his boxers, hips canting erratically, finally letting go of all of those little whimpers he’d done so well at holding in even as he kept his hands bunched in the fabric of Lecter’s jacket.

As he caught his breath, he was aware that his glasses had finally been knocked askew, and he hesitantly pulled his hands back.

“Should I -” he said cautiously, and Lecter shook his head, smoothing his own clothes.

“You needn’t. Clean up and go back to bed, Will.”

He nodded slowly, and moved to toe his shoes back off.

“I… thank you?”

Lecter merely executed that little nod of his, and moved towards the door.

“I’ll see you at breakfast.”

He stood there, watching the other man leave, staring blankly at the door for a long moment after it shut again. 

He surveyed the state of his clothes - couldn’t even bring himself to grimace at the mess of his underwear - and gave the wall across from him a lost, searching look. 

What the fuck?

He made to peel his ruined clothes off, leaving them in a pile at the foot of the bed.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror, saw the precise, deep tooth marks on his shoulder.

The skin wasn’t broken, but he’d probably have quite a bruise for his trouble.

He showered quickly, yet thoroughly before getting back down into the still-messy bed.

His dreams were still troubled, but he slept seven hours straight through for the first time in months.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter One was originally posted [here on my tumblr](http://technikbythestairs.tumblr.com/post/48814904366), back in the day. Chapter Two can be found [ here.](http://hoverboardbandit.tumblr.com/post/48887073013)
> 
> A number of works related to these chapters (some of which may eventually find their way to this site) can be found [here](http://hoverboardbandit.tumblr.com/post/49419499739/) and [here](http://hoverboardbandit.tumblr.com/post/49998465803).

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not active in this fandom anymore, but I can always be fund [here on tumblr](http://hoverboardbandit.tumblr.com).


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